Three Fine and Professional Arts schools (Family and Consumer Studies, Exercise, Leisure and Sport and Speech Pathology and Audiology) have a new home.

Yesterday, the Board of Trustees approved the realignment proposal to move the three schools to the College and Graduate School of Education to form the College and Graduate School of Education, Health and Human Services.

“We can offer a more integrated and coordinated approach to education,” CGSE Dean David England said. “We can provide more contemporary curriculum for students, more funding for faculty, develop more opportunity for research and thereby better serve the strategic goals of the university.”

The three schools from Fine and Professional Arts will join three current CGSE programs: Adult, Counseling, Health and Vocational Education; Educational Foundations and Special Services; Teaching Leadership; and Curriculum Studies.

The realignment will have more of an impact on the faculty than the students, England said.

According to the realignment proposal, the restructuring will help strengthen ties between faculty and researchers in the two colleges.

Bringing the schools together allows for a more coordinated approach to health and a broader approach to education helps to enhance the lives of students.

Director of the School of Family and Consumer Studies, Mary Dellman-Jenkins, said while her colleagues have enjoyed the experience of working with faculty in Fine and Professional Arts, the realignment helps to organize the schools.

Dellmann-Jenkins said the schools have been working together recently, which is one reason for restructuring them.

She also hopes moving to the CGSE will open up more opportunities for students within her college to travel and study abroad.

Timothy Chandler, dean of the College of Fine and Professional Arts, said the realignment will bring clarity to the college he described as divided between the arts side and health and human service side. He said the realignment will send a message that “we are a school of the arts.” That could make it easier to raise money because people are more willing to give to the arts.

Initial administrative realignments will begin in July 2005. For now, there will be no curriculum changes. During an interim period from July 2005 to June 2006, faculty members will discuss new polices, procedures, governance structures, academic leadership needs and potential program realignments.

“Faculty in the two colleges are generally quite optimistic and looking forward to opportunities this realignment will offer the new EHHS,” England said. “It will create an even stronger academic school.”

Contact education reporter Joe Stanonik at [email protected].